An American Idyll eBook

I would have gasped if I had not caught the look of
awe and reverence on Carl’s face as he gazed
eagerly, and with what respect, on his offering.
I merely took a hunk of what was supplied, set my teeth
into it, and pulled. It was salty, very; it looked
queer, tasted queer, was queer. Yet that
lunch! We walked farther, sat now and then under
other drippy trees, and at last decided that we must
slide home, by that time soaked to the skin, and I
minus the heel to one shoe.

I had just got myself out of the bath and into dry
clothes when the telephone rang. It was Carl.
Could he come over to the house and spend the rest
of the afternoon? It was then about four-thirty.
He came, and from then on things were decidedly—­different.

How I should love to go into the details of that Freshman
year of mine! I am happier right now writing
about it than I have been in six months. I shall
not go into detail—­only to say that the
night of the Junior Prom of my Freshman year Carl
Parker asked me to marry him, and two days later,
up again in our hills, I said that I would. To
think of that now—­to think of waiting two
whole days to decide whether I would marry Carl Parker
or not!! And for fourteen years from the day I
met him, there was never one small moment of misunderstanding,
one day that was not happiness—­except when
we were parted. Perhaps there are people who
would consider it stupid, boresome, to live in such
peace as that. All I can answer is that it was
not stupid, it was not boresome—­oh,
how far from it! In fact, in those early days
we took our vow that the one thing we would never
do was to let the world get commonplace for us; that
the time should never come when we would not be eager
for the start of each new day. The Kipling poem
we loved the most, for it was the spirit of both of
us, was “The Long Trail.” You know
the last of it:—­

The Lord knows what we may find,
dear lass,
And the Deuce knows what we may do—­
But we’re back once more on the old trail,
our own trail, the out trail,
We’re down, hull down, on the Long Trail—­the
trail that is always new!

CHAPTER II

After we decided to get married, and that as soon
as ever we could,—­I being a Freshman at
the ripe and mature age of, as mentioned, just eighteen
years, he a Senior, with no particular prospects, not
even sure as yet what field he would go into,—­we
began discussing what we might do and where we might
go. Our main idea was to get as far away from
everybody as we could, and live the very fullest life
we could, and at last we decided on Persia. Why
Persia? I cannot recall the steps now that brought
us to that conclusion. But I know that first Christmas
I sent Carl my picture in a frilled high-school graduation
frock and a silk Persian flag tucked behind it, and
that flag remained always the symbol for us that we
would never let our lives get stale, never lose the
love of adventure, never “settle down,”
intellectually at any rate.